


This Is How We Fall

by Zayrastriel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-29
Updated: 2012-10-29
Packaged: 2017-11-17 06:43:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/548727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zayrastriel/pseuds/Zayrastriel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The one who rebelled,<br/>The one who fled,<br/>The one who led - </p><p>This is how they fall<br/>(Not in a blaze of glory.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Is How We Fall

**Author's Note:**

> Basically angst. Also the fact that I don't think we take the whole Falling thing seriously enough.

**_For this is how we fall,_ **

**_Not in a blaze of fire and raging glory_ **

**_But in silent submission,_ **

**_Naked and aching_ **

****

~

_the one who rebelled,_

_righteous even in ignoble defeat_

_as power slipped away_

_away_

_away into oblivion_

_and slowly creeping shame_

 

It happens slowly, so slowly that it comes upon him as a wave of vicious understanding, icy shocking stinging when the demon laughs at him, high and cruel.

She burns his way out and screams with pain, scorn vanished in a blinking instant.

But the sound lingers in his skin where it’s singed his soul. It’s a scar, a acidic burn of hate and loathing.  Rejection.

_~ Yer nat fallen, angel, but yer fallin’, fallin’ fast ‘to the Pit_

_Best grab on tight ‘cause God ain’t gotcha hand ~_

This doesn’t feel like Anna said her Fall was like, a brief flash of pain and then the blissful oblivion of humanity.  This is slow, this is tantalising and taunting because every day he’s wondering how long it’ll take till he won’t be able to come when Dean or Sam call.  How long it’ll be till he can’t whisk his charge away from under Zachariah’s nose.

He’s not Fallen till he gives up his final, damning duty.  He’ll give up his mission when he Falls.

A neverending cycle, one that Pestilence shoves in his face, one that Crowley implies with snide, shocked looks and murmured biting half-comments because is there anything more pitiful than this?  Glory brought low.

Oh, so low.

 

~

 

_the one who fled,_

_away, away from the cruelty of heaven,_

_and the taint of hell,_

_only to find on earth a special kind of dark_

_invasive, pervasive,_

_for what else is hope?_

_what else is love? -_

_but God’s most wicked sin_

_._

Anna distantly remembers her Fall with a distance that’s ever-present, that resonates with every memory, every trembling not-human-not-angel nerve. 

She remembers in the same way she remembers being Hanael, not a _she_ but a _you_ , tall and bright and strong with unseeable wings and an unemotional love.

Beautiful Hanael, lost in an instant, an instant she feels with every step she takes in her human body before Dean Winchester is saved and she knows what that instant feels.

It’s not an explosion of sensation, a piercing finite pain as she rips her Grace out of her, all silvery shimmery life.  That’s what she tells Castiel, though she gives him fair warning (because that’s the path he’s taking, slowly and surely with shocking speed) of the pain.  Of hooks that embed God’s light deep into an angel’s core, into the incorporeal and corporeal body as one, linking light-soul-body.

But it’s more than that.

 It’s who she is, what she is.

It’s taking the _you_ and leaving the _she_ , lesser for all that humanity is great.

(An angel without Grace, after all, is an angel without Grace.  No human.)

The first thing Anna thinks when she Remembers is that nothing, not cold, distant brethren, nor an absent, uncaring Father, could equal the cruel loving of her Fall; the sensation of every bone shattering in a grotesque harmony with her screams.  A moment of doubt that not even Dean’s warmth, the smooth stroke of his skin against (in) hers can erase.

The last thing she realises when Michael grips her face with cold, loving fingers, is that they already have.

For if Heaven is God, and Hell is God, then what can Earth be but God, cruel and righteous?

 

~

 

_the one who led,_

_with steady gaze and passion bright_

_the army of dark_

_crushed by the light_

_and we’ll remember still now that name_

_that name of heaven’s greatest shame –_

_Lucifer._

Lucifer knows it’s over when Sariel coughs up a last weak spurt of blood, clutching weakly at the gaping hole in her chest; dying in harmonious tandem with Remiel, now inert though his screams still echo around the field.  From where he crouches, leaning heavily on the hilt of his broken sword, Lucifer can see the convergence point of that verbalised agony of death.  A body, covered ignominiously by two vast, once-glorious sapphire-blue wings.  Now, they’re speckled with blood, rumpled. 

Even from this distance, it’s impossible to miss two particularly dark, twisted patches, one on each wing.  Uriel and Zerachiel had held Remiel down as Raphael gripped tight, pulled and _wrenched_.

Lucifer used to tend those feathers.

 _It’s over_ , he thinks, hollowed out with despair and guilty, horrifying relief.

There’s a slight laugh, beside and slightly behind him; Michael.  Stiffening at the noise, Lucifer makes to push himself to his feet, to turn and face his death with dignity.

Instead, he feels a foot kick him forwards violently – off-kilter and exhausted, he can’t stop the fall, can’t stop from landing face-down in the dirt.

 _Oh, little brother_ , Michael sighs ruefully.  _It’s not over yet_.

 

~

 

It isn’t over even when he lies twitching, bones laid bare and his Grace slipping through the idle, fidgeting fingers of the high angels – the Archangels, the Principalities, the Seraphim.  They whisper and taunt him, play disdainfully with the flickers of red-gold-black that _taint_ his Grace now, no longer pure silver-white.

Each stroke of fingers feels less like an agonising whip of energy coursing through every cell of his body; it’s more a tangible imprint of fingers on his soul; who he was, who he is, who he’ll ever be.

(An imprint that scourges and burns, acidic and cold.)

It’s not over when he’s on his knees before every angel in existence, whispering out screamed apologies in a hoarse nightingale’s song as Michael forces out of his throat, manipulating vocal chords and murmuring words in his head till he’s left confused and hazy ( _what am I thinking who am I what am I-_ )

They know Lucifer doesn’t mean it, that he won’t say it of his own volition.

But there is no dignity in this, and he knows that as well as they do.

It means that he has nothing but empty rage and futile, endless longing when Michael casts him into the Pit, body perfect and flawless, soul stitched back together and Grace lying in whole tatters where it belongs.

 

~

 

_**For this is how we fall,** _

_**Not in fire and rage speared on glory’s sword,** _

_**But in lukewarm darkness, stripped naked and bare** _

_**Forced to our knees and whipped/ripped raw and red before the eyes of the world** _

_**Drowning long and slow in pitiless scrutiny** _

_**And the scorn of our brothers** _

_**Sisters** _

_**Gods** _

_**And men.** _


End file.
